Buying Time
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: High school didn't prepare her for this. Tess's life between the outbreak and canon.


Tess graduates high school as Cordyceps spreads its first long, lethal fingers across the United States.

She stands in a crowd of two thousand five hundred of her peers. She's highly ranked in her class but not the top. She sweats in a black robe and listens to an infinite number of speeches. The fungal infection is well-known, but not terrifying yet. It's like swine flu, a crisis from only a handful of years earlier. Some people will get sick, and some people will die, but the doctors will find a cure or a vaccine and the disease will pass, and in another few years they'll be laughing at how worried they were.

She got into her first-choice college. In the crowd, her mother, stepfather, and stepbrother are all cheering for her.

The ceremony finally concludes with the whole hot, sweaty crowd of teenagers yelling and throwing hats into the air. All they have to worry about is college tuition. All they have to look forward to is moving out. And yet, in ten years, fewer than a hundred of the people standing in the stadium will still be drawing breath.

Tess is one of them. Her family, smiling and waving, are not.

The infection strikes cities the worst. The people are packed in close to each other, like sardines, and the fungus passes easily and idly from one person to another. Instead of going to college, Tess and her family go to the Chicago quarantine zone. In the month between her graduation and the evacuation, Tess sees more death and blood than she's ever seen on television. She starts having nightmares of fungus bursting from her head, of trying to rip her family apart. She sees lists of the dead, in the early days when people still bothered to keep track, and her best friend is there.

"_Jessica Pryce? Oh my god, Tess, that's the girl you invited over a few times. You went to her graduation party. She was engaged, wasn't she? Oh my god. I can't believe it."_

"…_I'm sure some of your friends are on the list too, Mom."_

"_Tess! Don't be short with your mother. She's trying to cope, just like you."_

The military recruits Tess. Handling a gun comes naturally to her. She starts taking down infected and civilians alike. At first the screams bother her. People always plead for mercy. They always scream when she shoots as they run. But too soon she can't count her kill tally on all her extremities combined, and her fears move from her conscious to her subconscious.

She's not yet nineteen, but she starts downing alcohol to keep the nightmares at bay.

Three years after they move to the quarantine zone, Tess's stepbrother is caught spray painting the Firefly emblem on a wall. The family doesn't get a body. Tess visits the place and looks at the stains of her brother's brains and blood against the brick.

She's discharged since her family is untrustworthy. She keeps a low profile, knowing that the military might decide she's too dangerous to live at any given time.

"_What the fuck am I supposed to do now? My son is dead! I don't have a job! We're barely even scraping by!"_

"_You're alive, and you should be grateful for that! Your son can't say the same!"_

"_This isn't living! This is surviving, and I never asked for this!"_

"_We still have a daughter."_

"_You have a daughter. She doesn't give two shits about me."_

The military starts recruiting civilians for perimeter duty. Tess's mother goes out one night and doesn't come back. There's never an explanation, for her or for anybody else. Maybe she ran; maybe the Infected got her. Either way, she's gone, and it's just Tess and her stepfather. They both drink and ignore each other. Tess practices with a stolen pistol to stay sharp; she scrounges up ammo and starts hoarding food.

Five years after they move, the Chicago quarantine zone erupts in violence. The soldiers aren't delivering their rations. Fireflies, soldiers, and hungry citizens roam the streets at night. There are constant explosions. Tess's stepfather joins the uprising against the soldiers in the early rounds, when the military has the upper hand. He's rounded up, and his brains join his son's on the pavement.

Tess is alone and getting smarter. She takes whatever she can find. She boards up the doors and windows of her house and sneaks in and out. She starts trading what she's found for ration cards. She learns the hard way that crisis makes people dangerous. A gang of thugs ransacks her house while she's out and takes all of her goods.

She hunts them down, every last one. They didn't take her gun. With the murders comes notoriety. With notoriety comes more jobs, and more attempts on her head. Tess trades with soldiers, rebels, and Fireflies. They all know who she is. She has her thumb on the pulse.

"_You got accelerants?"_

"_Sure. You're a Firefly?"_

"_Yeah. I can get you meds, if that suits you."_

"_Wait—your voice. Damn, you're the one from the radio! You're the head Firefly? The one behind all these bombings and shit?"_

"_That's me. Name's Marlene. I'd rather you didn't tell people you'd seen me."_

"_I trade items, not information, but I'm not promising my lips are sealed."_

"_Fair enough. Good doing business with you, Tess."_

"…_You too, Marlene."_

The tides turn and the rebels start slaughtering the soldiers in numbers. People start leaving the quarantine zone, and Tess knows she should head out too. When the rebels take over, they won't be interested in trading; they'll kill anyone who doesn't join them and take what they want with force.

Tess heads to Boston, one of the most secure quarantine zones. She travels alone, carrying her own share of risks, but she'd rather bare her neck to the Infected than to her enemies. She shoots down Clicker after Clicker until the sound doesn't bother her anymore, until seeing the fungus is not terrifying but just a fact of life.

She's met with the unpleasant surprise that she'll need papers to get into Boston—papers she doesn't have. She's considering just sneaking in when she meets a man who'll forge papers in return for ammo. She has plenty to spare and makes the trade. The man is friendly, genial even, and he introduces himself as Frank. He's traveling with another man, much less friendly, but the warm introduction slightly softens Bill. They're heading north to a town called Lincoln, a place Bill's familiar with. Tess offers to continue to trade with them, and Bill accepts, his small, careful eyes watching her every move.

"_I ain't so forgiving as Frank. You cross us, you try to stiff us, and I'll put a bullet right between those pretty eyes."_

"_Frank'll be jealous if he hears you complimenting me."_

"_Don't mouth off at me."_

"_I won't stiff you, Bill. Bad reputations mean a lot these days."_

The papers get her into Boston even as she watches less-lucky refugees end up with bullets in their skulls for the crime of not having proper documentation. Given the food shortages, the soldiers will look for any excuse to deny someone entrance. Luckily Tess is still good at looking innocent, so she widens her eyes and they usher her in.

Several of her old contacts wound up here as well. It doesn't take long for her to make a name for herself in her new city. She smuggles contraband and always ends up on the good side of a deal. She meets Bill up in Lincoln, fighting Infected and hunters along the way, and he keeps her supplied. There's plenty to scavenge in an abandoned town.

Ten years after the outbreak, and Boston is feeling more and more like home every day. She knows people—soldiers, Fireflies, and citizens. She's not even thirty but it feels like she's lived a century.

Who could've guessed that her high school education would culminate in trading bottles of ibuprofen for ration cards? When she was eighteen, Tess had never touched a gun. By the time she was nineteen, she'd pressed a gun to countless skulls and pulled the merciless trigger.

She wasted her effort on calculus and chemistry; there aren't any colleges left to acknowledge her AP credits. She should've taken woodshop and maybe have learned something useful.

A relationship is the last thing on her mind until she deals with a man named Malick and he starts dogging her. She's not interested. She doesn't have time for love. Survival in the new world requires all of her senses. She humors him, once, and they do a job together, but Malick's aim is shitty and he wastes half of her ammo. Cute, maybe, but useless. She shoves him aside and continues to work alone.

Only a handful of days after she turns thirty-two, Tess is hunting down a man with whom a deal went south. He makes a lot of promises and wild attempts to save his life as she stands with a boot on his throat. She draws her gun and shoots and is turning to leave the alleyway when she notices a man standing in the shadows.

"_You his friend?"_

"_No. He shorted me too."_

"_Gotta be careful these days. Deal with me, and I won't rob you."_

He doesn't talk much, and when he leaves Tess is still curious. She follows him discreetly through the city. He's the kind of person people move out of the way for; he carries strength in his posture even though his hair's streaked with grey.

His name's Joel Miller, she finds out from tailing him. He's living with his brother. They're new to the quarantine zone.

Joel Miller starts encroaching on her territory. Soon Tess is hearing about him in the underworld, and she isn't sure she likes that. She does not desire competition, and based on her brief interaction, he's smarter than most of the others she's run into.

She approaches him and offers the alliance.

"_I remember you. Tess, right?"_

"_That's right. You're Joel. People're talking 'bout you. You're a smuggler too."_

"_Gonna snuff me out?"_

"_No. Let's team up. Watch each other's backs. You're new here. I know everybody. I could use a partner."_

"_Guess I don't got a problem with tryin' you on for size."_

He's wary but accepts. When they take on their first joint job, smuggling illegal goods to the Outside, Tess is amazed by how well they work together. She's sharper, quicker, and more knowledgeable; he's stronger, steadier, and determined. Soon they're no longer asking whether the other wants to come; soon it's _we've_ got a mission.

Her only complaint is that Joel eats into her alcohol supply, but it's probably best that she's not downing it all herself anyway.

"_Got myself a partner now."_

"_Really? You seemed smarter than that."_

"_Why? You've got one."_

"_Yeah, and starting to regret it. Teaming up's stupid. You'd have better luck going alone."_

"_Your advice aside, you two should meet sometime. His name's Joel."_

"_Joel and Tess, huh? What kind of partner?"_

"_What kind of partner is Frank?"_

_Bill snorts and doesn't respond._

Whatever she says, it never really escalates past platonic partnership. One night they share a particularly drunken kiss, and it slides into something more, but come morning neither of them mention it. Part of Tess thinks that Joel's incapable of a romantic relationship. He's the most closed-off man she's ever known, and she's met a lot since the outbreak. They don't ask about each other's pasts, and he never volunteers information. Tess would ask Tommy, but Tommy and Joel have long since parted ways, after a vicious fight Tess doesn't hear about until she asks why Joel's trying to keep busier.

Twenty years after the outbreak, Tess finds herself feeling settled. Her life is in order. She's satisfied here in Boston. She has a companion, something she never had in Chicago. Her job is steady, giving her rewards that most citizens will never taste. It's hard to starve as a smuggler—easy to get your head blown off.

Then Robert stiffs them, and everything goes to shit.

Tess likes Ellie, this little girl who's never been outside the zone before. She's got a wicked mouth on her and enough fire to burn through Clickers. Tess has never had a sister, and now she's aware that she'll probably never have a kid either. Ellie is as close as she'll ever come, and she's happy with it.

The moment the Runner's teeth sink into her neck, Tess knows it's over. She puts on a brave face for Ellie and Joel, her stomach twisting when the girl says she's glad to have met them. As they run over the rooftops and down in the street, she feels bitter and angry. She was happy, happy at last, and now shit's hit the fan again. Now she has a miserably short sentence on her head.

She gives herself up as the logical course of action, not even really out of any sense of duty. Maybe Ellie holds the cure for humanity, and maybe not. But it's the last straw to grasp at, and she holds on to that hope as soldiers burst in the door. Her bullets find them and their bullets find her.

Her head reels as she hits the floor. She remembers, stupidly, the taste of cake at her graduation, the laughter of friends, her fingers typing away on a smartphone.

What has twenty years bought her?

She might as well have died back then.

* * *

**A/N: Beware as I venture into new fandoms! Anyway, just beat TLOU on Sunday and I'm writing fic to deal with the emotions. I like Tess. She's pretty and badass. She's pretty badass. Expect various other oneshots soon. Enjoy! Reviews/concrit appreciated.**


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